Synopsis: A serial killer who wants to quit. A detective struggling to keep his personal life out of a murder hunt. And a celebrity psychiatrist facing an incredible challenge. Three damaged individuals, linked by their traumatic histories. They’ve chosen very different paths. Now those paths are about to cross.

Sarah Silver is a hedge fund manager – from Monday to Friday she makes a killing in the markets. At weekends, though, she hunts men, not profits. Martin White used to be a brilliant detective. But his family, judgement and self-control are deserting him. And Karl Gross has sold millions of books on serial killers. However he’s a controversial figure in the medical community.

Can Martin keep it together and catch a killer who commits almost perfect crimes? Is Karl capable of unravelling Sarah’s psyche and putting an end to the killing? Or will she disappear when she realises that the hunter has become the hunted?

Ash Rating: 3.5/5

Ash Review: PsychoAnalysis presents me with a conundrum as a reviewer!.Such a conundrum that it has taken me two weeks post reading to think through a review. VR Stone presents a novel which is certainly unlike any other I have read; a female serial killer Sarah Silver who appears to kill solely for enjoyment with a detective and a psychoanalyst working to understand her motivations and stop her? That is different!

The characters within PsychoAnalysis are brilliantly written; V R Stone works very hard to explore the depths of his characters and explain their nuances to the reader. The novel opens with a killing and it is the intricate nature of the events leading up to the killing which pulled me in – the plot is heavy in detail which makes the killings more real and more disturbing. Sarah's murders are cold, calculated and meticulous in their planning at least initially but as she begins to lose control and surrender to her impulses, she attempts to understand her own psyche. What drives her to kill? Why does she enjoy it so much?

Sarah is not the only one attempting to understand her psyche. Detective Martin White is a broken man whose desire to understand what makes a killer tick is driven by his own trauma. The closer Martin gets to understand Sarah, the further he gets from himself and his own morality. Karl Gross, a psychoanalyst with questionable morality, is also driven to understand Sarah but the more he understands, the more endangered he becomes.

Psychoanalysis is well written, original and certainly a page turner but for me it was a difficult read. I am not usually uncomfortable with graphic depictions of violence in a crime novel but there were several points in the book where I had to stop reading for a moment. For many readers I am sure that these scenes would be mild so I am loathe to consider this as a negative in a review... we all have different levels of comfort. What I found more difficult however was the lack of a moral heart to the novel, PsychoAnalysis is a dark read and there are no characters whose moral compass rescues it from this or provides a sense of hope.

In conclusion, PsychoAnalysis is an excellent novel which has a well detailed story to tell and whose characters have depth. If you enjoy gritty dark fiction then this is an absolute gem and I would thoroughly recommend it. If, like me, however you need a hero to place the realism in sharp contrast then I would still recommend this book but perhaps follow it up with some light reading!